


Don't let go

by squidmemesinc



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Ice Skating, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-28
Updated: 2014-11-28
Packaged: 2018-02-27 08:45:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2686571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/squidmemesinc/pseuds/squidmemesinc
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What Hinata and the others don’t know is that Kageyama has never skated before, and he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t like being cold, and he’s seen people fall before, and it looks painful. Plus, he has this horrible image in his head of falling and having someone skating over his fingers, and the rest of that ends with a red-stained ice rink and no more volleyball, ever.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't let go

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while ago but I didn't post it because it's stupid :V But I guess I'm over it? Idk what I write that isn't stupid.
> 
> The thing about Kageyama being worried someone is going to skate over his fingers is me projecting. I'm a pretty good skater but I still have that fear every time I go that I'm going to fall and someone's going to get too close and...yeah. I feel like it's a reasonable fear for him to have since it would probably be hard to toss without full use of your appendages.

Hinata loves ice skating.

When Sugawara suggests they all go one day after practice, he is thrilled.

Kageyama, however, isn’t.

Hinata spends the entire time they’re in transit to the nearest ice rink telling Kageyama about all his best memories of ice skating. He’s gone with his family at least once every year since he could walk, but it’s gotten more fun since his sister was born. He tells him how good she is, and how she’s started trying to do ‘tricks,’ although really what she calls ‘tricks’ is just skating on one leg. Still, it’s cute, and he thinks Kageyama should appreciate it.

Kageyama responds as little as possible, which is fairly easy to do when Hinata is in his motor-mouth mode. He watches everyone else for signs of distress similar to the ones he is exhibiting. Nishinoya and Tanaka look at ease, and are shouting about the way Shimizu ignored them again today. The other second years look fine as well. Asahi doesn’t look particularly disturbed. He just smiles and talks with a very excited-looking Sugawara and a content Daichi. Tsukishima and Yamaguchi are in their own separate world, walking a little ahead of everyone else, as usual.

They finally get to the rink, and Kageyama makes a point of stopping to tie his shoe so he can be at the back of the line. He tells Hinata to go ahead, and Hinata does, likely too excited to do anything else. He nearly crashes into Asahi, who apologizes to him even though he wasn’t at fault. Daichi tells Hinata to settle down.

Kageyama is acting like he’s lost the full dexterity of his fingers. He slowly ties and unties his shoe three times. But even then, only half the team has gotten their skates. So he goes to the bathroom.

What Hinata and the others don’t know is that Kageyama has never skated before, and he doesn’t want to. He doesn’t like being cold, and he’s seen people fall before, and it looks painful. Plus, he has this horrible image in his head of falling and having someone skating over his fingers, and the rest of that ends with a red-stained ice rink and no more volleyball, ever.

He locks himself in a stall and tries to think of an excuse he can use to go home. He has homework? It’s true, but no one would believe he’d skip out on doing something ‘fun’ to do something like homework. Not with his grades.

He’s hungry? He’s always hungry. But they passed a bunch of little food places on the way here. Someone else would probably realize they were hungry too and offer to go with him, and then they would have to come back. So that's not a permanent solution.

Kageyama is only alone for five minutes before he hears the bathroom door open and someone comes in. He thinks it’s probably just another patron of the ice rink, but he hears a familiar voice and a familiar name. “Kageyama? Are you in here?”

It’s Hinata. He considers not answering. But if he tried to hop up on the toilet seat to hide his feet, Hinata might hear him. And by the time he’s done realizing that, he thinks it’s possible Hinata’s already looked under the door. He doesn’t know if the other boy would recognize his shoes or not, since he’s not very observant, but it’s possible.

He opens the door. “What do you want?”

Hinata blinks at him. “You disappeared.”

Kageyama doesn’t say anything. It wasn’t a question. He stares at Hinata, who starts to look creeped out.

“What, do you have diarrhea or something? Did you want privacy? I can leave if you…” He makes a vague gesture.

Now Kageyama’s face is heating up. “I don’t have diarrhea! That’s your thing!”

Hinata looks indignant and goes a little red too. “People besides me get diarrhea! Why are we talking about this? Come on, you have to come get skates!”

“I don’t want to skate!” Kageyama blurts out. His fists are clenched, and the rest of his body is tensed as well.

Hinata’s expression goes blank, and then gradually shifts to confused. “Why not?”

Kageyama crosses his arms over his chest. “I just don’t.”

“It’s fun though!”

“It’s not fun for me.”

“Why not?”

Kageyama growls in frustration. “Haven’t we already been over this? I just don’t want to. Ice skating is stupid and being cold is stupid and falling is stupid and—” Kageyama twitches his fingers, thinking about ‘and.’ “It’s just stupid.”

“What else were you going to say?” Hinata takes a step closer to him, which is made somewhat awkward by the fact that he’s already wearing skates (Kageyama is suddenly thinking about how thick or thin his shoes are, although he refrains from flinching because toes are less important for volleyball than fingers), and eyes him suspiciously. It might be meant to look threatening, to bully Kageyama into revealing his last reservation, but Hinata’s so short it really has no effect on him.

“Nothing.”

Now Hinata makes a frustrated noise. “Kageyama, don’t be so stupid. It’s not that cold once you actually start skating, and falling’s not that bad. Besides, I can help you, and then you won’t fall.”

“You fall down on a regular basis when you’re not wearing ice skates!” Kageyama protests.

“Yeah, but I’m better at ice skating!”

Kageyama finds this hard to believe, and if it is true, it’s kind of sad. “Don’t be so proud of that!”

Hinata grabs his arm and starts to pull him out of the bathroom. “Let me show you, then! You’ll think it’s cool, too! You’ll be like, ‘Wow, Hinata is so cool, the way he zooms around the ice rink all like ‘nyoom!’”

The taller boy resists being pulled, although it occurs to him that he probably can’t stay in this bathroom forever.

“Seriously, what’s the problem?” Hinata demands.

Kageyama mumbles something incoherent.

“What?”

He says it again, slightly louder. “Worried about…fingers…volleyball…”

“Why are you being so shy all of a sudden? I can’t tell what you’re saying.”

“I’m worried about someone skating over my fingers and cutting them off and never being able to play volleyball again!” Kageyama shouts.

Hinata stares at him for a moment, then starts laughing.

Kageyama’s face heats up. He grabs Hinata by his hair and yanks on it. “Don’t be an asshole!”

Hinata is still laughing, in between saying ‘ow,’ until Kageyama releases him. “That’s probably never happened to anyone in the history of the world, Kageyama. Here—” He grabs Kageyama’s shoulder for balance and lifts his foot up. “Touch it. It’s not sharp.”

Kageyama looks at the skate as if it’s going to bite him. Truthfully, it doesn’t look that sharp. He supposes he’s never really looked at skates up close before. It had a blunt edge on it, not knife-like, as he had been imagining. “Okay, it’s not sharp,” he admits.

“Touch it.”

Kageyama doesn’t see the point, but he pokes the edge of Hinata’s skate because he knows the other boy won’t drop it, otherwise.

“Not scary. Now, come on!” He grabs his arm again, and this time, Kageyama can’t root himself down fast enough to resist being pulled along.

XXX

Ten minutes later, somehow, Kageyama finds himself wearing ice skates, standing on ice.

That’s all he’s doing, though. Despite all Hinata’s reassurance, he is still freaked out. He can’t move. And despite Hinata’s promise to help him, he’s zooming around the rink. He makes a full lap and Kageyama still hasn’t budged except to get over to the wall, away from where people are trying to get in and out.

“Sorry, I just had to do one,” he says, cheeks red now from the cold.

Kageyama feels unsteady, even latched onto the wall. There is not enough surface area between him and the ground, and it’s slippery, and his nose hurts from being cold, and there is simply nothing about this that isn’t terrible.

“Okay, give me your hands,” Hinata says, as if it’s not a totally crazy thing to suggest.

“I can’t move,” Kageyama replies, feeling as though speaking will throw him off balance.

“Yes you can, stupid. Give me—here.” He goes to pry Kageyama’s hands off the wall, and the setter starts repeating ‘don’t’ at an increasing volume with each iteration.

Then, several things happen. The first is that Hinata manages to get Kageyama to let go. The second is that Kageyama is suddenly grabbing at Hinata. The third is that Tsukishima and Yamaguchi skate by, looking rather amused by the whole situation, and Tsukishima ‘accidentally’ bumps into Kageyama’s shoulder.

They fall. Hinata lands on his ass, and Kageyama lands on top of him, face smushed against the shorter boy’s chest. He quickly rolls off Hinata and pulls his hands in to his chest, looking warily at the other skaters.

Hinata starts laughing again, until he notices Kageyama giving him a sinister look. “What? Don’t you remember what you said to me when I served the ball into the back of your head? ‘There’s nothing scarier than that.’ So now that you’ve fallen, there’s nothing worse left, right?”

“Fingers,” Kageyama says, still clutching his.

Hinata groans and scrambles to get up. He manages it, and offers his hands to Kageyama. “We fell because you were too stiff.”

“We fell because Tsukishima _pushed me_.” Kageyama takes his hands and gets up with some difficultly, though now that he’s standing again, he thinks he liked being on the ground better. They stand facing each other, Kageyama gripping Hinata’s hands tightly, and holding the rest of his body tense.

“That, and because you were too stiff. Loosen up. Stand like you’re going to toss the ball to me.”

“I can’t—”

“Stop arguing with me and just do it already!”

Kageyama takes in a deep breath, staring at his feet. He shifts his feet a tiny, tiny bit, tries to bend his knees, succeeds after another few seconds of mental preparation.

“Okay, I’m gonna move now, so just glide with me.”

Kageyama doesn’t even nod, worried it’ll throw him off-balance again, and still watches his feet. Hinata starts shifting his weight, sliding his feet behind him. They start to move, and for one single second, it’s cool. They’re _sliding across the ice_. Instead of biting at him, the cold feels exhilarating, like it’s sharpening his senses. He looks up at Hinata.

And then he falls again. He grabs Hinata on the way down, and the other boy falls too.

He can hear Tsukishima and Yamaguchi laughing from the other side of the rink.

He accepts the hands that are offered to him without looking up, but when he does finally lift his head, he realizes the person who pulled him up was not Hinata.

“Kageyama, were you standing with one foot in front of the other just now?” Sugawara asks, smiling kindly.

Daichi and Asahi are lifting Hinata up. He brushes ice flakes off his pants.

“Yeah. Hinata told me to stand like I was setting.” He doesn’t let go of Sugawara’s hands. The wall is a whole two feet away.

“I think he just meant that you should bend your knees a little. You want to keep your feet even. And then you just kind of shift your weight from one side to the other, and you go.”

“Thanks,” Kageyama mumbles. He still doesn’t let go.

“Hinata?” Sugawara seems to have guessed why he isn’t free yet.

“Oh, right.” Hinata comes over and they transfer Kageyama between them. He feels like an idiot.

Daichi pats Kageyama gently on the back and Asahi gives him an encouraging thumbs up. “Keep at it, guys!” Daichi says. And then the third years are off again.

“You gave me bad information,” Kageyama accuses.

“I don’t know anything about setting! Sorry! Suga-san told you all you have to do, so let’s try it.”

He holds his feet evenly apart this time when Hinata starts moving backwards. He’s still somewhat rigid, but he keeps his knees a little bent, and they go about 10 feet before Kageyama freaks out that they’re going too fast and makes them fall again.

The fourth time, they get nearly a quarter of the way around the rink when a little boy comes zooming up to them and suddenly grabs Kageyama’s leg when he loses his balance, which makes the three of them fall. He gets up the fastest, and is off before either of them have time to process what happened.

The fifth time, they make a full loop. Nishinoya and Tanaka clap and yell, and Kageyama glares at them. Hinata takes advantage of him not paying attention and lets go of his hands. Kageyama flails around without his crutch and makes himself fall. Nishinoya and Tanaka boo.

“You have to start going by yourself at some point,” Hinata says as he helps him up.

“I wasn’t ready.”

“Fine, then how about now?”

“No!”

“Well then try to move with me at least.”

Kageyama tries; he shifts his weight over one foot, then to the other, shakily. Honestly, he’s a little less afraid of falling, now that he’s done it a couple of times. It kind of hurts—the ice is hard, and cold; don’t forget cold—but no one has skated anywhere near his fingers yet. In fact, most of the people on the rink are giving them plenty of space, since it’s apparent that he’s just learning to do this and will take down anyone who gets close.

But…he’s kind of skating. Shifting from side to side, although only a tiny, tiny bit, he’s pretty sure he’s propelling them forward at least a little bit faster than they would be going if Hinata was the only one doing the work.

“That’s one lap,” Hinata whispers quietly. It must be at least a minute that passes, but to Kageyama, it feels like it’s only a second later that he says it’s the second lap.

 _Two laps!_ Kageyama thinks. He loosens his grip on Hinata’s hands a little.

“You want me to let go?”

“Maybe just one,” he mutters, half-hoping Hinata won’t hear him.

“Okay, but don’t freak out and make us fall.” He pulls his left hand away from Kageyama’s and slowly turns so he can be next to him instead of in front of him.

They do not fall.

Kageyama wobbles a bit, unsure of what to do with the right side of his body without Hinata’s sturdy support, but he still doesn’t fall. They skate past Yamaguchi and Tsukishima, who are giggling again.

“Something funny, you assholes?” Hinata shouts back at them.

Kageyama isn’t paying attention to them. He’s aware that it’s probably stupid that he’s been holding one or both of Hinata’s hands this entire time, but he’s got bigger concerns than looking like an idiot. Or maybe, ‘had’? His legs are still a little wobbly, and he keeps waving his free arm around, but he’s doing it, isn’t he? He’s skating, and not falling. This must be their third lap now, and still he hasn’t fallen. He starts to think maybe this isn’t so hard; maybe it’s not so scary.

“I told you, it’s fun!” Hinata says, turning to him and smiling.

“It’s alright,” Kageyama admits. Now that he’s getting the hang of it, he supposes it doesn’t totally suck. For pretty much the first time, he looks up from his feet. He notices Hinata’s been guiding him around groups of people, where he was mostly just blindly following. Now he can actively avoid them. He feels the movements of his legs growing steadier as the motions of skating ingrain themselves in his body. It’s getting easier, and he also notices that means they’re going faster.

Hinata is skating a little tiny bit in front of him. He notices himself trying to skate a little faster until he’s in front of Hinata. He’s not sure if he’s doing it subconsciously or not, but Hinata moves in front of him again.

It was probably inevitable, but Kageyama is starting to feel competitive.

He lets go of Hinata’s other hand.

He’s not wobbling at all now; his movements are sure and smooth. He’s really gotten the hang of it. This is probably (almost definitely) going to be a bad idea, but it’s not in his nature to resist. So, okay, it’s on.

“Oi, Hinata.”

“Hm?”

He glances sideways at his friend/rival. “One…two…three… Go!”

They both take off at the same time.

Kageyama is freaking out a little because he’s going so fast, but it’s going fine. He’s got this. He’s not unsteady at all. He’s gotten used to the feel of the rough ice sliding beneath his skates, the movements he has to make to go forward. Just amplify those and he’s going fast.

Just, not as fast as Hinata.

As Hinata pulls ahead, he realizes something else.

He doesn’t know how to stop.

And it’s this panic that causes him to lose his balance and fall. And this time, when he slides forward, and Hinata seems to know he’s fallen and slows, turns—only to get taken down as well. Even after Hinata has fallen on top of him, they still slide even further, taking out Yamaguchi and Tsukishima as well.

So there’s a pile of four Karasuno volleyball club members lying in a pile on the ice. Kageyama is at the bottom of it, checking to see if he still has his fingers. He does. But having two and a half bodies on top of you (Yamaguchi’s leg is pinned under Hinata and Tsukishima) is not exactly comfortable either.

The third and second years come over in a hurry to help sort out their first years, apologizing to the other patrons, who have to get out of the way of the wad of fallen people on the ice.

“Geez, Kageyama, did you have to be the King of the Ice Rink too?” Tsukishima complains, shivering from the flakes of ice that got shoved up the back of his sweater.

“Hinata didn’t tell me how to stop!”

“I forgot! It’s your fault for wanting to race.”

“I think we’ve probably all had enough skating for today,” Daichi suggests.

XXX

They’re on the train again when Kageyama whispers to Hinata, “Next time, I’ll win.”

“You wish, newbie,” Hinata mutters back, nudging him in the ribs.

“I got the hang of it pretty quick, didn’t I?”

“I’ve still got years of experience on you.” He sounds way too smug about that.

“You still fell as many times as I did!”

“You dragged me down!”

“Stop fighting!” Daichi says from the seat next to Kageyama.

The quiet resumes, dragging on for a few minutes. There’s only the gentle noises of the train moving across the tracks.

“Thanks,” Kageyama mumbles after a while.

Hinata doesn’t respond at first, but then he notices Kageyama fidgeting. “What, you were talking to me?”

“Yeah. For teaching me. Dumbass.”

“You’re the dumbass.” Hinata grins at him. He’s glad Kageyama learned to skate, because now he’s got something else he can beat him at. From the seat next to him, Kageyama is thinking the same thing.


End file.
